


medicine (or solidarity between two mentally ill people)

by sadifura



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Genre: Borderline Personality Disorder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, nd solidarity!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 07:03:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20238703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadifura/pseuds/sadifura
Summary: Daichi Misawa has a secret.He has to take pills; not for what he stated was his "heart condition" to his teachers, but his mental health.He can't let anyone find out.But what if the person he'd least want to find out is the one the most compassionate to his illness after all?





	medicine (or solidarity between two mentally ill people)

**Author's Note:**

> SO THIS STARTED AS A VENT THING BUT...DAICHI MISAWA HAS BPD AND PEOPLE SHOULD ACKNOWLEDGE IT.
> 
> also has hints of tutorshipping but it can be read as friendship

Daichi stared at the two bottles of pills he had to take every single night. Every single night to mask his problems; every single night to feign normality. In the Yellow dorm, nobody knew about his nighttime ritual; take a Risperdal, take some Fluvoxamine, and hope nobody notices you taking freaking...crazy pills. God, he would be so humiliated if his friends saw. 

His “friends”: his paranoia made him doubt honestly any of them cared about him anyway. They barely paid attention to him; heck, even Sho Marufuji outright said “who?” whenever he sees him, so some friends they are! God, thinking of that made him want to continue his other nighttime ritual; the other nighttime ritual he did two years before he went to Duel Academia, two years before he decided to leave his past behind him and become the best duelist, the number one in Duel Academia.  
The daily use of Risperdal made him put on a bit of weight, and sometimes eat a bit more at breakfast or lunch; not anything unhealthy, mind you, but just enough that it filled out a bit of muscle; his Fluvoxamine intake every morning had made him sleepy (sometimes, on bad days, missing class and getting scolded by Head Teacher Medici), but he’s worked out enough and went to bed early enough so the side effects of his medication doesn’t get too noticeable. 

Of course, he has to hide some other undesirable traits from his classmates’ and peers’ prying eyes; a symptom of the mental affliction he was diagnosed with at thirteen was an almost stomach churning, uncomfortable need --- nay, obsession --- with getting attention. Combined with the other affliction he was diagnosed with that made him a near obsessive perfectionist, some things became really difficult to hide. 

Of course, Daichi was the best in his class.  
He made the top grades, and was always the best in dueling in his grade. Heck, he even had a formula for creating the best decks known to man. Even teachers said he’d probably be able to be promoted to Obelisk Blue in a couple of years.  
But there was always this nagging feeling that he would never be better than anyone; this nagging feeling that no one would ever give him the attention he desired.  
He’d have frequent panic attacks as a result of his fears of not getting enough attention; as soon as he saw someone was better than him, someone was getting more of a spotlight on them than him, he felt the incredible urge to do something bad, something impulsive, something...stupid.  
If he saw a classmate do something spectacular, something he couldn’t do, he’d have the sudden urge to want everyone to look at him; in his old school, he would have made a cutting motion with his fingernails and hoped people would pay attention to him because no one can ignore someone that messed up in the head, right?  
But that sort of thing was what got him hospitalized when he was younger, and attached to all these pills that mark him as abnormal; he couldn’t be abnormal in a bad way in Duel Academia; he didn’t even bother to fill out accommodation forms (what if the teachers reveal that he’s a crazy freak in front of everyone in class, he thought), and only disclosed that he has to take “medication” every night to stay “healthy”.  
Yes, that’s right, “healthy”; thanks to his perfection at research and Duel Academia’s incompetence at even looking at basic medical records, he was able to feign that he had a “heart condition” that he had to take “heart medication” for.  
Headmaster Samejima probably suspected something; he was fairly intelligent, from what he’s gathered. But Head Teacher Medici? That guy was an idiot, frankly. He probably saw “heart condition” and thought “yes, indeed! Signor Misawa must not participate in the sports activities in Physical Education, he must not!” and not even bothering to do a little research into his “sickly” student’s “heart condition”. 

Of course, Daichi mused, maybe his mental afflictions are a condition of his heart in some sense; a sign that his heart is messed up, broken, and afflicted with everything that’s wrong with the human condition.  
He’s surprised that he hasn’t come across a cursed card and had his mind irreparably destroyed by some deity or something. Of course, something like that would never happen to someone as already freakish as he is; no one would probably notice if he was possessed by a demon card anyway because his peers probably all sense that he’s a broken, irreparable, idiotic, imperfect, disgusting, ugly, stupid, incompetent…

Daichi didn’t know if his hands were shaking from his anger at himself, his sudden urge to take out the pocketknife he cleverly hid and hurt himself with it, or the urge to just take all his crazy pills at once and hope he doesn’t wake up, but being afraid that if someone finds him dead they’re just gonna mock him and throw him in the sea or something. Sometimes he has the urge to just say, “Screw taking my medication, I’m gonna show everyone what a psycho freak I am and then everyone would just give me the attention I deserve,” but---

Knock, knock, knock.

A knocking at the door shocked him out of his hellish introspection. 

Knock, knock, knock. 

Okay, it’s getting annoying, he thought. I should just go to bed, take my pills, and hope my mood swings don’t wake me up in the middle of the night.

“Oiiiiii, Misawaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” Knock, knock, knock. A familiar voice...Judai?!

Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. Out of all the students, Judai was one of the people he wanted to impress the most. He couldn’t find out about his secret! 

“I’m coming, Judai! Just hold on a minute...I’m...cleaning my room!” Judai isn’t the brightest bulb in the box; he’d probably fall for that!

(Then again, aggressively stashing pills in a secret hiding spot is a sort of cleaning in a sense.)

“Cleaning your room? Isn’t it a bit late to clean your room? It’s almost bedtime!” He forgot Judai could sense his tone of voice. What that boy lacked in intellectual intelligence, he made up for in emotional intelligence.

“Well...erm...I have a lot of research papers lying around! I’ve been kind of busy!” Yes! Judai could buy this! After all, he knows nothing about the inner workings of Daichi Misawa!  
“Woah, research papers? Awesome! Whatcha researchin’?” Judai was fooled, alright, but Daichi’s plan only went so far. He wasn’t prepared for someone stopping over at his dorm in practically the middle of the night, after all.

He decided to make up an excuse. “Never you mind, Judai! What are you doing stopping by the Yellow dorm when it is almost bedtime!” Daichi knew in his mind that scolding Judai would not deter him from doing something that would only want Head Teacher Medici to expel him, but he had to risk it. He had to use his authority as a Ra Yellow. 

“Aww...I can’t visit one of my best friends? I woulda brought Sho ‘n Hayato too, but Hayato was too busy playing some computer game and Sho yelled at me because he wanted to go to bed. So I went to visit you because I had no one else to talk to!” 

Daichi analyzed this statement piece by piece. Best friends? How could Judai say he’s “best friends” with him when he mostly hangs out with Sho Marufuji and Hayato Maeda; maybe he could claim that Jun Manjoume was his “best friend” but not Daichi “who would want to touch him with a ten foot pole? Nobody!” Misawa.  
Of course, he only came here because Sho and Hayato weren’t paying attention to him: of course! Of course, he’s always a “backup friend”! He’s been in that situation since elementary school --- nay, preschool! And of course there’s no reason Judai would actually like him if he figured out how diseased his brain was, and how quickly he could swing from a normal state to depression, rage, or anxiety times ten if anything terrible happened, or how he’d regulate those episodes with his trusty pocketknife when no one was looking, OR---

\--- “Hey, Daichi...you went all quiet all the sudden! Is everything OK?” 

His voice wavered. His hands shook. He did everything in his power to not make it seem like he wanted to cry, but some kind of sadness just snuck into his voice. “Y-yes, Judai. I...I’m fine.”

Judai probably didn’t buy it. (oh god your pills are still on the table) 

He needed to let him in. (what if he SEES…)

Who cares if he sees! He’s been breaking down for the past few days and he needs to tell his friend what’s going on! (yeah but then he’s gonna abandon you and you’re gonna be all alone and then you’re gonna cut yourself so bad that you’re gonna have no CHOICE but be airlifted to like a mental hospital or something)

“Just. Shut up. Shut up, defective brain,” he mutters under his breath.

There’s nothing to catastrophize about. Just...open the door. And let Judai in.

Daichi opened the door, hands trembling. And there he was, standing in those Slifer Red pajama clothes that are fairly standard issue in the dorm. 

“Hiya, Daichi!” God, Daichi was ready to cry. It’s as if Judai didn’t notice the storm of emotions on his face, or inside of him. He just smiled and acted as if everything was OK, as usual.

“Daichi?” Judai quirked his head to the right. Finally, he’s getting something’s wrong. Suddenly, he ran over to the table where his pills and glass of water was. “Ohh, is that your heart medication?”

Daichi sighed. It’s as if he can’t even read the label that clearly states it’s a mood stabilizer and a depression and anxiety drug. 

“No, Judai, those are for...my brain.”

Judai smiled excitedly. “Ohh, do you have like...a brain parasite or something? And it’s eating you from the inside and you can’t get rid of it unless you confess your love to a cute guy or something?”

“I...I’m not sure where you got that from.”

“Oh, Hayato told me that was in a manga he was writing.”

Daichi chuckled. Some part of him was amused at Judai discovering his medication and practically nothing changing, but some part of him still wanted to cry.

“Daichi? What’s wrong?”

Daichi took a breath in. It was time to tell him the truth.

“Judai, the truth is that I take these pills because of a couple of mental afflictions I have. These mental afflictions have sent me to the hospital, and have tempted me into doing things that would hurt me.”

Judai paused for a moment, touching his finger to his chin. “Hmmm...Oh! I take pills like this, too!”

“You do?” 

“Yeah! Uhh…I don’t remember what they’re for but supposedly they help me pay attention ‘n stuff! But sometimes I forget to take it and I get really sleepy!”

“Is that why you sleep in class so much…?”  
“Well, kinda. But also because Cronos is sooooo boring.”

Daichi began to laugh, the first time he had done all night. 

“Hey, what’s so funny? Me sleeping in class hurts my grades, y’know!” Judai made an exaggerated pout. 

Daichi wiped a tear from his eye; a tear from laughter. “Well, I just feel better. I feel better to know that someone in this school is like me, that’s all.”

“Oh. Okay!” Judai began to leave. “Bye bye, Daichi! I have to get back to the dorm or Daitokuji will wear my skin as a suit!” 

Daichi smiled. “Goodbye, Judai. Let’s talk to each other like this again.”

Daichi Misawa felt warmer in his heart. He felt better. He didn’t have to hide his afflictions from Judai, at least; not anymore. 

In that moment, he felt a beautiful sense of solidarity; that someone just like him can be at this school and not be bullied. 

He is safe.


End file.
